Abstract
To say that conservatives of any hue abhor debates on ideological matters is almost to labor the obvious. To them, issues of ideology seem impractical, pointless, and at times embarrassingly bewildering. Traditional disinclinations aside, the muddle in which the early ND ideologues found themselves after the return to democracy had an additional reason: the legacy of the ideological vacuum left behind by all of that party’s predecessors. In the interwar years, the royalist People’s Party had relied almost entirely on rabid anti-republicanism for institutional support and ideological validation. Similarly, in the postwar years, when the right-wing parties came to administer the state, they almost entirely relied on reactionary anti-communism as their surest weapon for fighting the postwar ideological battles. As the bitter fruits of the civil war, the rightist parties had in fact a real interest in denigrating ideological matters, since they themselves had grown up in the nursery of the same political negations that they in turn sought to sustain and protract. But in 1974 the past was utterly discredited, and Greek voters wanted more from their parties than a mere return to the status quo ante; above all they wanted new, untarnished images.
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Notes
Anthony Downs, in his classic An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1957), 96, defined ideology as ‘a verbal image of the good society and of the chief means of constructing such a society’.
Hoi Ideologikes Arches tes Neas Demokratias [The Ideological Principles of New Democracy] (Athens: Nea Demokratia, 1975). For further analysis see Constantine M. Kallias, He Ideologia tes Neas Demokratias [The Ideology of New Democracy] (Athens: n.p., 1976).
Established constitutional tradition in Greece had accepted for many decades the concepts of the ‘nation’ (to ethnos) and the ‘people’ (ho laos) as having the same meaning. It was as a consequence of the civil war that these concepts were effectively separated in order to legitimize the coercive measures taken by the state of the Right. The people were accordingly differentiated into ‘nationally-minded’ (ethnikofrones) and ‘enemies of the nation’ (anti-ethnikofrones), with the former fully ordained by the official constitution, and the latter ruled out of the polity by the para-constitution. The dictatorship of the colonels even dared to institutionalize the separation of the people from the ethnos. Very informative on these matters, though somewhat sketchy, is Nicos Alivizatos, ‘“Ethnos” Kata “Laou” Meta to 1940’ [‘Nation’ versus ‘People’ after 1940], in Hellenismos-Hellenikoteta [Hellenism-Greekness], ed. D. G. Tsaousses (Athens: Hestia, 1983), 81–90.
In Greece, the ‘nation’ has been historically linked to and embodied in the ‘state’ which, in turn, aimed at realizing the former’s aspirations. A concise account of the ideological associations between such notions of state and nation, as well as the transformations they underwent in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is in Thanos Veremis, ‘From the National State to the Stateless Nation: 1821–1910’, in Modern Greece: Nationalism and Nationality, eds, Martin Blinkhorn and Thanos Veremis (Athens: Sage-ELIAMEP, 1990), 9–22.
The Constitution of Greece, Art. 1, para. 3 (capitals in original; emphasis added). For the fierce debate between government and opposition concerning the usages of the concepts of ‘nation’ and the ‘people’ in the text of the constitution, see A. Pantelis, Les Grands Problemes de la Nouvelle Constitution Hellenique (Paris, L.G.D. J., 1979).
This self-perception of ND as a national party fits well the liberal democratic rationale, according to which the public interest is the sole aim of democracies, and its achievement is the responsibility of sitting governments. For an elaboration of this see D. Robinson, A Theory of Party Competition (London: John Wiley & Sons, 1976), 9.
For a detailed chronicle of the relations between Greece and the EC see, among the many sources available, the account by George L. Kontogiorges, He Hellada sten Evrope [Greece in Europe] (Athens: Giovanes, 1985).
Its author was Greece’s chief representative at the membership negotiations, and personally close to Karamanlis and his political orientations. Later, in 1980, Kontogiorges became the first Greek member of the European Commission. Particularly useful on the earliest period of Greece’s association with the EC is also George N. Yannopoulos, Greece and the European Communities: The First Decade of a Troubled Association (Beverly Hills, Cal.: Sage, 1975).
For an overview of the EC-accession debate between the main political forces in Greece, see Susannah Verney, ‘To Be or Not to Be Within the European Community: The Party Debate and Democratic Consolidation in Greece’, in Securing Democracy: Political Parties and Democratic Consolidation in Southern Europe, ed. Geoffrey Pridham (London: Routledge, 1991), 203–23.
ND’s nationalization program was no small matter. One need only consider the boastful claim in 1980 of M. Evert, one of Karamanlis’ most loyal disciples, that ‘now the state controls 95% of the banks, 100% of the energy companies, 100% of telecommunications, 100% of the companies related to national defence, 100% of the public-utility companies, 100% of transport, 100% of railway and air travel, 60% of the insurance companies, 50% of the refineries, 50% of the shipyards and 70% of the fertilizer companies.’ Quoted in Christos Christides, ‘Poso Filelefthere Einai he Oikonomike Politike tes ND’ [How Liberal is ND’s Economic Policy?], Nea Koinoniologia, no. 5 (Spring 1989): 112–18.
For a journalistic view on ND’s ‘social mania’, see Gianes Lampsas, He Hellenike Nomenklatura: Hoi Pronomiouchoi tes Exousias [The Greek Nomenclature: The Privileged of Power] (Athens: Roes, 1985), 103–108.
The number of employees in the public sector as a whole rose by almost a third between 1974 and 1978. The increase was smaller as far as central government employees were concerned (12 per cent), yet became enormous when public-corporations employment was brought into the picture (an increase of 79 per cent). At the same time, public expenditure rose from 30.8 per cent of the GNP in 1974, to 35.2 per cent in 1978 and around 42 per cent in 1979, with unstoppable upward tendencies. For more related data, see Constantine Colmer, ‘The Greek Economy at a Crucial Turning- Point: Political Reality Versus Social Aspirations’, in The New Liberalism: The Future of Non-Collectivist Institutions in Europe and the U.S. (Athens: KPEE, International Symposium, May 1981), 285–314.
Let it be said here that, eventually, the former EDIK space was more successfully occupied by PASOK than ND. See George Th. Mavrogordatos, Rise of the Green Sun: The Greek Election of 1981 (London: Centre of Contemporary Greek Studies, King’s College, 1983);
and Kevin Featherstone and Dimitris Katsoudas, ‘Change and Continuity in Greek Voting Behaviour’, European Journal of Political Research 13 (1985): 27–40.
Speech at the first congress of ND, 5 May 1979, The Speeches, 6: 1173–85. For an analysis of that speech, see John C. Loulis, ‘Ho Fileleftherismos sten Politike Filosofia tes ND’ [Liberalism in ND’s Political Philosophy], Epikentra, no. 8 (May-June 1979), 29–40.
Dimitrios K. Katsoudas, ‘The Conservative Movement and New Democracy: From Past to Present’, in Political Change in Greece: Before and After the Colonels, eds, Kevin Featherstone and Dimitrios K. Katsoudas (London: Croom Helm, 1987), 99.
Following Rose, I understand a tendency to be ‘a stable set of attitudes, rather than a stable group of politicians … held together by a more or less coherent political ideology’. Richard Rose, ‘Parties, Factions and Tendencies in Britain’, Political Studies 12, no. 1 (February 1964), 37.
‘Above all, the party is a decision-making system . . .’ Samuel J. Eldersveld, Political Parties: A Behavioral Analysis (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1964), 1.
On the participatory elements of PASOK’s ideology, particularly interesting is Dimitris Kioukias, ‘Political Ideology in Post-Dictatorial Greece: The Experience of Socialist Dominance’, Journal of Modern Greek Studies 11, no. 1 (May 1993): 51–74.
The debate about populism in Greece is relatively recent and yet, informed by the PASOK experience, already rich in theoretical insights. Most notable is the contribution by a group of analysts and scholars who collaborate with the journal Polites. Among their theoretical production I would like to single out the book by Elephantis, In the Constellation of Populism, not only for what it offers in elucidation of many of the subtleties in PASOK’s populist discourse, but also for its literary elegance. Several main themes pertaining to that book can be found in an earlier article by the same author, ‘PASOK and the Elections of 1977: The Rise of the Populist Movement.’ Of particular interest are also the collective volume by Nicos Mouzelis, Thanos Lipowatz, and Michalis Spourdalakis, Laïkismos kai Politike [Populism and Politics] (Athens: Gnose, 1989); Christos Lyrintzis, ‘The Power of Populism and the Greek Case’, European Journal of Political Research 15, no. 6 (1987);
Ioannis Papadopoulos, Dynamique du Discours Politique et Conquete du Pouvoir: Le Cas du PASOK (Movement Socialist Panhellenique), 1974–81 (Berne: Peter Lang, 1989).
For a comprehensive review of the Greek problematic on the phenomenon of populism, see Christos Lyrintzis and Michalis Spourdalakis, ‘Peri Laïkismou: Mia Synthese me Aforme ten Hellenike Vivliografia’ [On Populism: A Synthesis Occasioned by the Greek Bibliography], Greek Political Science Review, no. 1 (January 1993), 133–62.
The debate about populism in Greece is relatively recent and yet, informed by the PASOK experience, already rich in theoretical insights. Most notable is the contribution by a group of analysts and scholars who collaborate with the journal Polites. Among their theoretical production I would like to single out the book by Elephantis, In the Constellation of Populism, not only for what it offers in elucidation of many of the subtleties in PASOK’s populist discourse, but also for its literary elegance. Several main themes pertaining to that book can be found in an earlier article by the same author, ‘PASOK and the Elections of 1977: The Rise of the Populist Movement.’ Of particular interest are also the collective volume by Nicos Mouzelis, Thanos Lipowatz, and Michalis Spourdalakis, Laïkismos kai Politike [Populism and Politics] (Athens: Gnose, 1989); Christos Lyrintzis, ‘The Power of Populism and the Greek Case’, European Journal of Political Research 15, no. 6 (1987);
Ioannis Papadopoulos, Dynamique du Discours Politique et Conquete du Pouvoir: Le Cas du PASOK (Movement Socialist Panhellenique), 1974–81 (Berne: Peter Lang, 1989).
For a comprehensive review of the Greek problematic on the phenomenon of populism, see Christos Lyrintzis and Michalis Spourdalakis, ‘Peri Laïkismou: Mia Synthese me Aforme ten Hellenike Vivliografia’ [On Populism: A Synthesis Occasioned by the Greek Bibliography], Greek Political Science Review, no. 1 (January 1993), 133–62.
Some attempts to present PASOK as a distinctively petty-bourgeois party are not convincing. See for example Michalis Spourdalakis, ‘A Petty Bourgeois Party with a Populist Ideology and Catch-all Party Structure: PASOK’, in Socialist Parties in Europe II: Of Class, Populars, Catch-all?, eds, Wolfgang Merkel et al. (Barcelona: Institut de Ciencies Politiques i Socials, 1992).
Cf. Ioannis Papadopoulos, ‘Parties, the State, and Society in Greece’, West European Politics 12, no. 2, April 1989, 54–71. Also see the results of a national survey on the electoral support to the three major parties according to a number of socio-economic variables, conducted in February 1980 by the Center for Political Research and Information (KPEE) and presented in Loulis, ‘New Democracy: The New Face of Conservatism’.
On the notion of ‘plebeian culture’ see E. P. Thompson, ‘Eighteenth-Century English Society: Class Struggle Without Class?’ Social History, no. 3 (1978), 133–85.
For a presentation of that article adapted to the Greek case, see A. Liakos, ‘Peri Laïkismou’ [On Populism], Ta Historika 6, no. 10 (June 1989), 13–28.
Cf. for instance ‘the basic goals of the continuous mobilization of PASOK will be . . . the preparation for electoral competition with the Right, and the victory of the popular movement’, Exormese (Athens), 4 May 1980; quoted in Michalis Spourdalakis, The Rise of the Greek Socialist Party (London: Routledge, 1988), 197.
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© 1998 Takis S. Pappas
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Pappas, T.S. (1998). Battles for Ideological and Political Positions. In: Making Party Democracy in Greece. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780333983614_6
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